New Costume Practices and Performances
An international conference and exhibition of costume 25-27 March 2015
Department of Film, TV and Scenography Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture Helsinki, Finland Critical Costume 2015 is supported by the Department of Film, TV and Scenography, Aalto University; by the Academy of Finland, FiDiPro Costume Methodologies Research Project; and by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. New Costume Practices and Performances
Costume in Focus Research Group
4 Critical Costume 2015 5 Critical Costume 2015: New Costume This relatively simple idea provides multiple concepts for The body is in the centre of costume research by definition. and proposes a garment that is designed as a means to Practices and Performances further enquiry: Is the life of a costume only as long as Some of the Critical Costume 2015 artists explore the extend the experience and physical response of the dancer. the performance-run? How does costume evolve together objectification of the body from a social, a political Charlotte Østergaard, on the other hand, focuses on the Critical Costume 2015 presents contemporary with and through the performer’s body? Can costume and a gender perspective. Costuming the ‘Other’ interaction between the performer’s proportions and costume practices and performances by thirty be alive, is it a living organism? And, what do materials becomes a way to pose questions on the performativity the position inside-or-outside the body of the costume two artists-researchers from three continents and mean for the creative practice of costume design today? of the body, its ageing, and dying. Gabriella Daris to develop a dialogic investigation on scale. Interaction various artistic backgrounds. The works examine The Critical Costume 2015 exhibits reflect this enquiry manipulates her body through gesture, posture, and the with the costume as object is also the method in Ellen the performative qualities of material and form - and pose further questions. use of prosthetic birds as her sole ‘costume’ until she Sampson’s work, which explores how the ways that shoes whether physical, digital or virtual - and stimulate A considerable number of submissions for Critical Costume becomes alienated from her body, a woman-bird-puppet are worn and gestures are performed create powerful the audience’s thinking to reconsider the role of 2015 addressed issues regarding the relationship of body herself. The work of Jorge Sandoval explores the space affective experiences for dancers – the performers who costume in contemporary performance by proposing and nature and proposed a variety of sustainable materials of the ‘Other’ through a layering of bodies: projected have the most ‘complex and ambiguous relationships’ new modes of representation as well as new artistic as costume materials. Is this response representative of the image becomes his tool to create a visual commentary with their shoes. Sofia Pantouvaki focuses on an artistic processes. Moreover, the selected works explore current exploration of what is natural in costume - and of metaphorical space that exists within bodies when process of mutual sharing as a method for creating how the scenographic body is constructed on a to what extent did the reference image of the Organorgan they become sites for performance. Alyssa Choat reveals performer-generated personalized costumes, aiming at spatial, temporal and conceptual level through body costume put emphasis on this aspect? Once we received bodies through concealing them: she creates an interactive enhancing the actors’ performance through creating an manipulation, material exploration, embodied design the full amount of submissions, costume and nature / interplay through garments that conceal parts of the body, intimate relationship between actor and costume. Kate and its interpretation. costume and environment and concepts for creating encouraging the exploration of the power of sight. And Berford is also concerned with the investigation of artistic The Call for Presentations for Critical Costume costumes with biomaterials and bio-compatible materials certainly, costuming also provides a context for critical processes for the conceptualization of costume and uses 2015 was visually illustrated with a costume from a were a strong theme. Are current costume designers comments on the objectification of the female body drawing to trace personal interpretation in the process performance experiment entitled Organorgan, in which concerned with creating ‘bio-costumes’? The final within contemporary oppressive societies, as in Nermine of meaning-making. In her mediated costume, Emma the performance makers investigated interaction as a shape of the exhibition shows only a small sample of the Said’s work which uses fabrics, cuts and colour to unseal Ransley investigates the performative aspect of costume performative act. Organorgan (2013) combined space, these proposals as some of the invited artists were finally unspoken taboos. within a spatio-temporal context of transformation sound, lighting design and technology with common, unable to join. The work of Anna Sinkkonen looks at the One of the main interests of Critical Costume 2015 is to through the actor’s actions. And finally, Sidsel Bech, in recognisable objects, plantae and the performers’ and recreation of natural elements and products (flowers, investigate current and emerging methodologies for collaboration with Christine Hatton, explore costume as audience’s presence documented through biosensors. vegetables, etc.) as a means for narrative representation. researching costume as well as proposing new ways to a scenographic event that is brought in existence through The costumes, designed to ‘resemble functional work Pesonen moves a step ahead by proposing real vegetables research through costume. Several exhibitors present time, space and movement, the only elements giving garments to characterise the performers as parts of as the main material for her costume which becomes their current artistic research projects which make evidence identity to an otherwise inanimate object. a larger system’ (Pesonen, 2014), were planted with an edible performance through interaction with the of the variety and the potential of new creative practice The emergence of new approaches and innovations in seeds that grew during the rehearsals and the two-week audience. Claire Doyle immerses her body in nature to as a tool for research enquiry. Jessica Bugg continues her the field of costume seeks to inspire and enable creative performance period, until they finally decomposed at create ephemeral costumes and explores how natural work on costume as a lived experience that is informed work that integrates traditional visual languages of the the end of the performances. materials affect body shape and texture. and shaped through action and the movement of the body stage with digital arts aesthetics, processes, techniques
6 Critical Costume 2015 7 and technologies. New design practices include wearable as in experimental or other research-based occasions. with an environmental friendly approach. A different is a design commentary on exactly this subject: how technologies with interactive qualities as well as media Simona Rybáková, whose work regularly engages with approach to material elaboration is shown in the work of individuals coming from different backgrounds create such as projectors and screens, which propose new non-traditional materials in costume design, shares a Jörn Fröhlich, who works on steampunk aesthetics as a new textile structures that take a three-dimensional form dramaturgical scenarios through mediated or projected number of images from live performance productions in transformative design method using recycled textiles and through communication and exchange, thus becoming costume. Frankie Knuckles presents the body as a which she developed to an advanced level the creation of garments. And finally, Denise Massman contributes to this performative costumes ‘animated by the physical and/ performance machine that operates through the eye of costumes using foam padding materials aiming at new discourse of costume designers’ personal investigation by or invisible body’. the camera: using a costume element that functions as creative forms. Ines Alda presents a personal exploration allowing herself to express ideas completely freed from What is the aim of these artistic explorations through a reflective contemporary mask, the audience becomes in creating a biomechanical textile based on the violent any restrictions imposed by creative teams, showing her costume concepts? Each project poses questions and the projection of the performer within the performer. manipulation of textile surfaces to express a damaged skin ‘own mind’s’ small scale characters. proposes ways to look at costume as expressive embodied Natasa Stamatari’s work acts between past and future or flesh wound, designed as a second skin that embraces Encounters enhancing interaction between individuals design. Key elements related to costume – body, movement, and comments upon global culture and contemporary organically the dancer’s body. In her project, Giulia is another common theme among Critical Costume 2015 experience, materials, interaction and an overall aesthetic environmental issues using plastic fibres and light. Zsófia Pecorari explores mental and physical fragility in relation to artists’ work, and is brought forward in difference spaces quality – are discussed in each one of these approaches Geresdi’s costumes do not exist without projection: she violence against women by creating an ‘armour-costume’ in the exhibition. These encounters create situations in and re-proposed through new materials and contemporary uses the forms of her costumes as a three-dimensional made of 75 pieces of shaped resin and 400 magnets which which bodies connect and extend in space and in relation ideas and concepts about what human life is about today. canvas that hosts layers of colour and texture to create hold the pieces together; as the show develops and the to one another. Joost van Wijmen creates a playful set of Therefore, Critical Costume 2015 presents the work characters. Two more works combine technology and an performer moves, this costume performs and deconstructs costumes based on a simple yet inventive idea; he creates of costume-based practitioners that seek to address the unusual material for costume, smoke. Daphne Karstens itself, leaving the female performer wearing it exposed, two Velcro suits to invite to experience an encounter based implications of research processes, new technologies and uses near-death experiences as a theme to investigate the showing her most fragile, intimate side. The notion of on physical contact and on the implications brought to this media for the study and practice of costuming today ephemerality of life and, using a refined tube system, directs fragility is in the centre of the artistic exploration also contact by the material used. This interactive character through new costume practices and performances. An smoke from a smoke machine through the performer’s of Dawn Summerlin, who develops an unconventional is also evident in the costumes of Kegham Djeghalian exhibition is destined to perform costume in the absence body to produce a costume that represents the ‘spiritual costume for dancers using porcelain, hence removing the who proposes a performative installation in which the of the main elements which inspired, influenced, and body’. Rosemarie Allaert’s work takes this substance dancers’ ‘natural, fluid freedom’ for movement. Two more garments create a space for co-habitation, paring and completed the costume’s original creation. Hopefully, further, and explores smoke as expressive material to artists in the Critical Costume 2015 exhibition work on sharing. Sue Prescott creates a two-in-one costume that the costumes presented in this exhibition in physical and capture the vulnerability of a character; smoke around material exploration using the same raw material, rubbish links people with environments; her work combines a mediated formats will stimulate a dialogue between the the performer’s moving body becomes an immaterial - bags, in very different ways. Sally Dean explores the real physical connection between two people by using viewers and the work on display in creative and challenging yet performing and constantly transforming - costume relationship between costume and the performer’s body two garments that inter-connect through a single sleeve ways. We invite you to share the experience. that takes an active part in telling a story. from a kinaesthetic perspective that seeks the creation of whilst the technology embedded in the garments allows Several artists in the Critical Costume 2015 exhibition somatic experience through sensing the costume, its volume additional connections between costume and environment/ Sofia Pantouvaki are interested in presenting their personal investigation and material. Karolina Mazur, on the other hand, crafts landscape. Lastly, but very interestingly, the only piece Critical Costume 2015 Exhibition Curator of materials in and through their artistic practice, with the material an elaborate texture to create herself a of work in the Critical Costume 2015 exhibition that is Professor of Costume Design for Theatre and Film, both in professional, industry-based performance as well new textile for designing costumes on a given narrative, a collaboration of two artists, Susan Avila and Rui Xu, Costume in Focus research group
8 Critical Costume 2015 9 Bio / Nature
10 Critical Costume 2015 Anna Sinkkonen Costume Designer Finland [email protected] Venditori
Anna Sinkkonen studied Costume and Stage design at Aalto These costumes were worn by chorus members acting University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture (then University as vendors in a scene where the main characters, of Art & Design Helsinki) and graduated in 2007 (MA). Sinkkonen Mimi and Rodolfo, fall in love and wander around has worked as a freelance designer since 1997 designing costumes in the streets of Paris. Each costume is an entire shop and sets for theatre, and costumes for films. She has been working and the singer inside is the seller. Prostitution is one in the Finnish National Theatre and Ryhmäteatteri and also in other theme in the opera and the idea of a woman selling theatres and smaller groups in Helsinki. She has visited Lahti, Vaasa products from her own outfit or from her own body and Seinäjoki City theatres as a designer and designed costumes (shop and person are the same in this costume) is for films and TV for independent production houses. Some of her as if she would sell herself. recent works include: costume design for Puccini’s La Bohème in Finnish National Opera, costume design for Puccini’s Madame La Bohème (Puccini) Butterfly in Tampere Ooppera, costume design for Beckett’s Waiting Finnish National Opera 2014 for Godot and stage and costume design for Uspenski’s Uncle Fedja Director: Katariina Lahti at the National Theatre, costume design for Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja
the Robber’s Daughter and Master and Margarita in Ryhmäteatteri, Helsinki. Anna Sinkkonen is the president of the Stage and Costume Designers’ Union in Finland and a member of Finnish OISTAT Center’s governing board. Anna SinkkonenAnna
12 Critical Costume 2015 13 Liisa Pesonen Grow Independent Artist Finland Grow is a process/concept created for costume [email protected] design which is not part of a performance, but attempts to create its own narrative as costume- based installation. Grow is a wearable flowerbed for Liisa Pesonen is a Finnish fashion and costume designer based in plantae. The conceptual costume includes a dress Helsinki. She is currently employed for the Costume Methodologies with a pannier (the flower bed) and a wig, both research project at the Department of Film, TV and Scenography, planted mainly with edible plants. The installation Aalto University. She is also a freelancer in various fashion, costume is shown in an exhibition space, where the costume and art projects. In 2013, she graduated with a Master of Arts in is presented on a mannequin accompanied with Fashion at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture. dishes, vinegar and oil. Audience members daring Her thesis project, Immediate Invisible, is an artistic women’s fashion to eat from the costume become participants of its collection and media art work that consists of outfits able to performance. The idea is based on how participants compose soundscapes evolving based on the wearer’s physiology. in another project (Organorgan 2013) wanted to eat In the last few years, Pesonen has co-authored and presented from the planted costumes, as they ‘smelled like a academic papers closely related to her artistic work in international fresh salad buffet’. The narrative of the costume conferences. Her interests lie between fashion and performance. deals with themes such as who is eating who, and At the moment, she finds inspiration in biology and surrealism, as the cycle of life among others. The growing wig also well as in technology that enables revealing and observing entities discusses the closely related topic of growing hair: usually hidden from human perception. water, nutrition and light have an effect on both processes, and people talk about growing hair and plants in a similar manner, as if they were actively contributing to the process. Liisa Pesonen
14 Critical Costume 2015 15 Documentation of the Ephemeral Claire Doyle Costumes Photographer and Designer, UK [email protected] ‘When using the natural environment’s sources on the body, can tactile and photographic documentation be enough to uphold the live performative and ephemeral event?’This piece of research (beginning 2014) uses natural substances Claire Doyle holds a First class honours degree in Design for to modify the naked body, acting as a layer to reshape and Performance at Edge Hill University. She currently works as transform skin. The materials represent a second skin; this photographer for Parallel Magazine (first issue released in January way we can understand the materials’ reaction to body shape, 2015), and lead designer for Theatre By Numbers (Manchester). heat and texture. How does the body defend itself? How does the body immerse itself? How does the body adjust? These were just a few of the questions that influenced the process and relationship between the performer and the environment. The documentation of my costume intends to portray the substances as immersive, beautiful and strong. I want them to appear as if they belong on my body, as if we are united and growing together. Photography is a vital form of saving the experience. Photographs enhance atmosphere, the sense of a journey and story. These photographs intend to portray the body as deformed, extended, growing and raw. It is always necessary to photograph and document the entirety of my investigation, no matter how experimental, because the ephemeral nature of the costume cannot be relied on to be less or more of a success with practice. I believe my costume is capable of being worn by anybody - the materials are not designed for or belong to a certain gender, age, or body type. I embrace examples of materials we all have access to within the land surrounding us. I find it important to use as much bare skin as possible so that the body becomes as vulnerable and as bare as the materials. Brigid Doyle Brigid
16 Critical Costume 2015 17 Body / The Other
18 Critical Costume 2015 Gabriella Daris Lop Lop: WORD or WOman biRD Independent Researcher/MRes Homage à Max Ernst & Arthur Humanities & Cultural Studies Alumna [email protected] Rimbaud Opened with a birdcall sounding, Lop Lop: WORD Gabriella Daris is an independent scholar of or WOman biRD, was performed in 2008 at Cabaret humanities, art and dance historian, curator Voltaire, the Dada House in Zurich. Drawn from of visual cultures, dancer and choreographer. Max Ernst’s 1921 collage, The Word or Woman-Bird (La Parole où Femme-Oiseau), it is a rite of passage from ποίησις (poiesis) into πράξις (praxis). André Breton described hysteria as ‘the greatest poetic discovery of the late nineteenth century.’ Gabriella Daris’ corpus becomes a nest onto which six inanimate, prosthetic birds are incorporated. These signify the hysterogenic zones, acting as poetic stimulators and producing a corporeal poem through blocks of becoming, a series of operations, postures, body manipulations, convulsions, and contortions. Her figure stands as a hybrid of a Graeco-Japanese geisha-nymph and a woman-bird-puppet. The self is split; her shadow is her döppelganger - an instrument of writing. Alienated from her body, she casts her own Lop Lop. With an act of self-pygmalionism, during her autoerotic scene, she dies le petit mort. Her self-indulgent pleasure of ageing and dying is reflected in the iconography of her final pose, from Anna Pavlova’s The Dying Swan (1905), ending with the sounding of a swan song. Gabriella film capture Daris,
20 Critical Costume 2015 21 Jorge Sandoval Doctoral Candidate Aalto University, Finland [email protected], [email protected] Wearing the ‘Other’
Jorge Sandoval is currently a doctoral candidate at Aalto University. Wearing the ‘Other’ explores gender and the space He holds an MFA in Theatre and Interdisciplinary Studies from The of ‘the other’ through multiplicity of perspectives University of Regina and a BFA in Art History and Studio Art from and repetition of forms. The exploration of the body Concordia University in Montreal. Sandoval teaches Design and within the body and the production of metaphorical Performance at the University of Regina in Canada and he is the space through video and performance are consistent resident set and costume designer for the Banff Summer Arts Festival and important elements in the creation of my artistic (Canada) since 2005, where he designs and mentors young designers work and research. I find important to connect from Canada and abroad. Sandoval actively researches and works the idea of the body as a metaphorical space with in issues related to queer identity, theatre and performance as well Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptualization of the grotesque as the production of space. Most recent exhibitions in 2014 include realism in the carnivalesque sense. As I link these two BODY I at University of Regina’s 5th Parallel Gallery, BODY II at Gallery worlds, the term performativity in the Butlerian sense West in Toronto. He is a member of the Costume in Focus research becomes the common thread that allows my work group, based at Aalto University. to explain the concept of the body as performative and the body as a site for performance. ????????????? Jorge Sandoval Jorge
22 Critical Costume 2015 23 Alyssa Choat Revelation through Concealment Associate Lecturer, Master of Design Research University Technology Sydney, Australia Revelation through Concealment is the culmination [email protected] of several projects that investigate fields of vision, concealment of the body and perception. The haunting and uncanny feelings experienced in the presence Alyssa Choat is an Associate Lecturer at UTS, since 2014. She of a shrouded or concealed body, divorced from was awarded a Masters of Design by Research. Having worked the known parameters of bodily representation, professionally in the fashion industry for many years, Alyssa has signify death in a similar way to a historical garment an interest in fashion design process, the body, performance and in a museum. Revelation through Concealment is identity. Alyssa’s research practice is an in depth, visual enquiry into multidisciplinary work located within the blurry identity, gender and the body, through the use of concealment parameters of conceptual fashion design, categorized of the body as a tool for engaging with notions of the gaze. Her as a collage on the body. It is an exploration of vision, performance work has been exhibited extensively. the power of sight and how to be perceived by others’ representations and consumption. This research project’s title, Revelation through Concealment, is derived from a quote by art critic David Bourdon’s description of Christo and Jeanne Claude’s artistic practice involving the wrapping of monuments and landscapes in fabrics as a ‘revelation through concealment’ (1970), thereby revealing the form and shape of the object in the draped cloth and creating a new surface. Waded Photography Waded
24 Critical Costume 2015 25 Nermine Said Khotoum’ or Seals Freelance Costume Designer OISTAT Member, Egypt ‘Khotoum’ or Seals is a costume installation focusing [email protected] on controversial issues related to women’s social status in Egypt. The installation is about women and for women who still suffer daily from oppression and Nermine Said, an Egyptian Costume designer, graduated from social forces that prevent them from becoming who AUC, and holds a Major in Theatre. Said has also received a diploma they want to be and how. Through fabrics, colours, in fashion design and dress making by correspondence from cuts and jewellery, a set of taboos are exposed, Pennsylvania in 2002 and a Post-graduate diploma in Folklore from unsealed and highlighted. Issues discussed via the The Academy of Arts, Egypt in 2005. installation are: underage marriage, women as sex slaves/objects, and the hypocrisy of society regarding women rights. ‘Khotoum’ unlocks those seals in a fearless attempt to expose and discuss these taboos hoping to spread more awareness about women’s right to live and exist in a non-sexist and non-judgmental society. Sameh Wassef
26 Critical Costume 2015 27 Research / Methods
28 Critical Costume 2015 Jessica Bugg Optical Laces 2014 Associate Professor RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Clothing worn in movement and dance is understood [email protected] through touch (and touch-like processes) that include visual, physical and perceptual investigation in the moment of wearing. Understood through lived Jessica Bugg’s research and practice is concerned with developing experience of the wearer and the viewer in and methods for embodied clothing design and communication at the through action, it both conditions and is of the body, intersection of fashion, fine art and performance. Her work has been placing it in a unique position to communicate and to performed and exhibited in galleries and venues including The connect participants through embodied performative ICA, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Linbury Space, Royal Opera House design and communication strategies. and The Place. Recent work includes concept and co-curation of Perceiving Dress: Optical Laces is part of a larger Fashion & Performance: Materiality, Meaning, Media for Arnhem research project investigating the dress and dance. Mode Biennale 2013, Netherlands; a costume led performance The film is generated from research into sensory at the National Gallery, London; installation at Wye Gallery, Berlin and visual perception of dress in movement. Seen and an Installation for Out of our Heads, an exhibition at The Ditch, as the performance site itself, the garment – made Shoreditch Town Hall, London. from shoelaces – is designed as a tool to extend the experience, perception and physical response of the dancer. The dancer’s verbal and physical responses have been analysed and employed to generate performance and film production that seeks to engage audiences on a sensory level. Rene Lindel
30 Critical Costume 2015 31 Charlotte Østergaard INSIDE OUT Independent Costume Designer / Associate teacher Danish National School of Performing Arts, Denmark For me costume is an artistic expression which is [email protected] created as a dialogue and interaction between the body’s proportions and movement with shape, volume, scale and materiality. My recent artistic Charlotte Østergaard holds a Masters of Arts Degree. She studied research project ‘The body and the space around or at the Design School in Kolding, Denmark, Department of Unique outside the body’ made in a residency at the Danish Clothing. She is an associate teacher at the Danish National School Art Workshops is a research in the borderland and of Performing Arts. She received a work grant from the Danish the connection between body and space. A study Arts Foundation, a residency at the Danish Art Workshop, artistic of when a costume tells of the body; and when the research ‘WØ608’ at the Danish National School of Performing Arts. costume in its extension moves away from the body Her artistic work has been represented at the Design Museum in into space and creates a story that pulls threats into Denmark and the National Gallery of Art. Costume design credits the room. INSIDE OUT is one of the outcomes of the are Danish Dance Theatre, X-Act, The Pantomime Theatre, Rambert artistic research. The ‘inside’ in not a fixed moment. Dance Company, Skåne Dance Theatre, The Royal Opera of Sweden To understand the inside you must know the outside and the Norwegian Royal Ballet. but if you don’t know the outside the inside may not appear. Does the inside exist without the outside?
The costume was produced at the Danish Art Workshop in Copenhagen.
32 Critical Costume 2015 33 Ellen Samspon Dance Doctoral Candidate Royal College of Art, UK Why are worn and discarded shoes so powerful? What [email protected] can we read from the footprints they contain? This new work by artist and shoemaker Ellen Sampson explores the ways that worn, discarded and empty Ellen Sampson is an artist, footwear designer and curator based shoes may act upon us. It examines how the traces in London, whose work explores the relationships between bodily and imprint of the body upon the shoe become experience, memory and artefacts. Her work addresses the manner records of movements, and of lives. By making in which material objects can become records of lived experience shoes that wear down more readily when worn, and how the traces of these experiences can be read or understood Sampson emphasizes the role of the shoe as a vessel by the viewer. Ellen is currently undertaking a PhD for movement and experience, asking us to examine at Royal College of Art, London. the draw or appeal of objects that are used and worn. Through film and performance Sampson explores how movement is inscribed onto the shoe. The works explore the powerful affective nature of the worn shoe, addressing the empty shoe as a metaphor for absence and loss. Thinking about the reciprocal relationship between the shoe and the foot, between wearer and worn object, has led Sampson to consider the complex and ambiguous relationships dancers have with their shoes. For dancers, shoes are the tools of their trade, objects that facilitate their own practice. Shoes, purchased, customised, then worn and discarded after a single performance become a manifestation or embodied record of the gestures performed. ????????????? Ellen Sampson
34 Critical Costume 2015 35 Sofia Pantouvaki Professor of Costume Design Aalto University, Finland [email protected], [email protected] Don Giovanni Giocoso
Dr. Sofia Pantouvaki is Professor of Costume Design for Theatre Don Giovanni Giocoso investigates how costume can and Film at Aalto University, Finland. Her professional design become more intimate to the actor through the use work includes over 70 designs for theatre, film, opera, ballet and of historical detailing and personal memory. The contemporary dance productions in major venues in Greece, UK, embroidery on the costumes was created individually Italy, Cyprus and Finland including Greek National Opera, the State for the specific actors, based on the close collaboration Theatre of Northern Greece, Athens Festival, Finnish National Ballet, between costume designer and performer. The and collaborations with Cairo Opera House, Epidaurus Festival and individual costumes were the result of genuine human La Scala, Milan. She is co-author of History of Dress - The Western World communication, building of trust, and a profound and Greece (2010), editor of Yannis Metsis – Athens Experimental Ballet process of sharing of personal experiences through (2011), and co-editor of Presence and Absence: The Performing Body artistic research. The process used in Don Giovanni (2014). Project Leader for Performance: Visual Aspects of Performance Giocoso is proposed as a method for performer- Practice (Inter-Disciplinary.Net); International Curator for costume generated personalized costume design, aiming at design, World Stage Design 2013; Associate Curator, Costume in enhancing the actors’ performance through creating Action (WSD13); and co-Editor of the international peer-reviewed an intimate relationship between actor and costume. journal Studies in Costume and Performance (Intellect, 2016). She is Don Giovanni Giocoso, based on Mozart’s Don the founder and leader of Costume in Focus, the first research group Giovanni, was presented at the Theatre Academy on performance costume, based at Aalto University. Helsinki by the acting programme in Swedish with musicians of the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, in collaboration with Aalto University. This installation presents the costume-led artistic research conceived and designed by Professor Sofia Pantouvaki as a spatial translation of a methodological approach that builds towards an advanced and enhanced costume designer - performer collaboration. Sanni Siira
36 Critical Costume 2015 37 Katie Berford Drawing Attention to Costume Doctoral Candidate Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL, UK This installation of artistic research showcases part [email protected] of a developing methodology that is researching the costumed-body in performance by focusing attention towards the element of costume. The methodology Katie Berford is a Costume Designer, PhD researcher (AHRC) and combines blind drawings of costumed-bodies in Associate Lecturer at Wimbledon College of Arts, London. Her rehearsals with a post-drawing reflection using practice-based doctoral research is using a selection of works by Peircean sign theory. the dance-theatre company Tanztheater Wuppertal to look at the The display presents two research drawings of significance of the costumed-body in theatre and performance. An costumed-bodies that were made during two active member of the TaPRA and IFTR Scenography Working groups, different rehearsals of Two Cigarettes in the Dark, a Elliott was awarded the 2013 TaPRA Postgraduate Bursary, was the performance by the Tanztheater Wuppertal dance Costume Designer-In-Residency at the 2014 PG TaPRA Symposium, theatre company at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in and disseminated her research at the 2014 IFTR. Her current practice London. These drawings are presented alongside A3 is developing a costume-based performance in collaboration with annotated versions of the drawings, which display dancer and choreographer Desiree Attard. the post-drawing reflection and help an audience to ‘read’ the work by pointing to and describing how particular drawn lines and marks relate to personal interpretations and processes of meaning-making. In addition, a series of short texts are also presented that offer brief explanations of Peirce’s sign theory, the blind drawing technique, and the PhD research context. Katie Berford
38 Critical Costume 2015 39 Emma Ransley InHABITing Dress Performance Designer and Educator Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, Massey University, New Zealand InHABITing Dress is a video installation that explores [email protected] how the habitual behaviour of the performer can have a physical affect on the costume. The moving image work shows the gradual transformation of Emma Ransley is a performance designer and educator, who the costume as the performer habitually pulls and predominately works with the medium of clothing. She currently picks apart the fabric revealing the body beneath. It teaches performance design at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School and explores costume as a spatio-temporal event and as is working towards her Masters of Philosophy. Her work examines a performative agent rather than a decorative layer. the performativity of clothing through the lens of violence. Emma Emma’s Ransley’s work explores the parameters of gained her Bachelor of Performance Design with First Class Honors costume, vacillating between performance art and which was jointly delivered from Massey University and Toi Whakaari: costume design, with focus on the ‘tipping points’ of NZ Drama School. In 2011, Emma was awarded with ‘Best Costume where costume meets the quotidian life. Frequently Design for Theatre’ for her exhibition piece, InHABITing Dress, which the works are absent of the ‘actor’ and examine the was presented at the Prague Quadrennial for Performance Design and vestimentary through herself as ‘performer’. Space. Her work was described by the judges as showing “extreme stylization” and “conceptual strength”. Her exhibition pieces, which explored the parameters of costume design, have been presented internationally. Emma Ransley
40 Critical Costume 2015 41 Sidsel Bech The Scenographic Costume Theatre Design Course Leader Edge Hill University, UK The Scenographic Costume is a collaboration between [email protected] scenographers Christine Hatton and Sidsel Bech and is a performed costume event through which ideas of the ephemeral nature of a scenographic costume are Sidsel Bech is a scenographer and has worked internationally explored and interrogated. It advances Hatton’s practical with John Conklin, Richard Foreman and The Wooster Group. She and critical work, supervised by Bech, made in response studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of Art and has an MA to the Critical Costume Symposium held at Edge Hill in Performance Studies from Central School of Speech and Drama. University in January 2013. The project takes ideas of She was the artistic director of Behaviourlab, a London based visual scenography, as outlined by Baugh (2005) and McKinney theatre company. She has throughout her career taught scenography, (2009), and applies them to the costume in performance. and developed and leads the Theatre Design course at Edge Hill It foregrounds the difference between the costume as University. She is a co-founder of Critical Costume. Her research static object (as presented on a tailor’s dummy) and as focuses on the pedagogy of Scenography, and experiments with the a performative event within the movement, time and changing nature of the role of the designer within contemporary space of a live performance. The performance-work performance practices. consists of two large scale dresses ‘worn’ by performers and which unfold into a large space, metamorphosing and blurring boundaries between body, space and costume. The costumes are suspended and animated by additional performers, and audiences follow the costume-performer inside the costume and experience the performance from within. Live filming and recorded images are projected onto the interior and exterior of the ‘dresses’. The research suggests that what makes this costume scenographic is its existence within the time, space and movement of a performance, so whilst the object of the costume physically exists, its identity as scenography exists only within the moment of its performance. Helen Newall
42 Critical Costume 2015 43 Technology / Mediation
44 Critical Costume 2015 Todd Welton-Oreggio a.k.a. Frankie Knuckles The University of Leeds UK [email protected] Performance Machine
Frankie Knuckles is artist, academic and general underground Both Derrida and Freud saw that documentation is troubadour. As Manchester promoter of the world’s leading fetish not a simple replication but an encoding with the club Torture Garden, he uses his position to create performative space symbolic. In Archive Fever Derrida states: ‘the technical beyond the stage. As a performer whom is interested in the relation structure of the archiving archive also determines which exists between the object and subject and how this is affective the structure of the archivable content even in its to the archive he creates for himself a world where the perversion very coming into existence and in its relationship becomes a reconstitution, which can only be performed on the to the future’ (Derrida 1996: 17). However, what if ‘outside’. Hence he justifies his use of the fetish club as performance one is to make the artist also the archivist and the space to test these ideas. He is a 13-year career lecturer and was audience also the artist, all roles being performed appointed Fellow of Institute for Learning for services rendered to in live time, within the space of fetish club. Robert pedagogy in 2007. Stoller once said that ‘fetish is a story masquerading as an object’ (Stoller 1985: 155) and the object in this story is simply a substitute, acting as synecdoche for a wider and more intriguing discourse. The discourse is fetish and this is my story. ‘Performance Machine’ performed for Torture Garden 2014. Olmo Reverter
46 Critical Costume 2015 47 Natasa Stamatari Designer Greece/UK [email protected] Plastic Eye Indian
Natasa Stamatari is a London based designer from Thessaloniki, My work is inspired by the people close to me, by my Greece. She completed a BA in Drama and Scenography at Aristotle heritage and inevitably by living in a multicultural University and an MA in Scenography at Royal Central School of hub, that is London. This costume was created for Speech and Drama. Areas of work include theatre, dance, film, a specific dancer in mind who is from Brazil; this photography and music. Her work is very much influenced by film, led me to research on Amazonian Tribes and the architecture and fashion. She has an interest in combining everyday deforestation problem of the earth’s largest rainforest. life with more distorted, surreal and otherworldly interpretations, The costume is mainly made out of plastic fibers stimulating the viewer and offering a different perspective of the mixed with reused feathers and leather and it is an world. It is also in an effort to connect through the physical, that interpretation of a futuristic member of a tribe. Its which cannot always be expressed with words. Natasa relishes the structure defines the way in which the dancer is opportunity to research and explore subjects that she finds interesting able to move. My principal objectives were how this whether the starting point be from a fragment of text or an image; structure and weight would affect the movement of these vary throughout and reflect different transitions within her the dancer’s slender figure, and how can this guide own life. In 2010, as part of Bottlefed Ensemble, she won the Jury us to tell a story and create a connection with the Award for Best Performance at the 100 Grad Festival, Berlin. One of viewer. Maya Deren’s and Alejandro Yodorowsky’s her latest works includes Candoco Dance Company’s Notturnino. surrealism, Jim Jarmusch’s film atmospheres and Nick Cave’s storytelling were major influences for this exploration. ‘Personally I prefer to snuggle on a hammock on a paluba floor and feel the cold breeze of the air blow across my face. I’d rather not to go to heaven or to hell, but fight here on earth to make our paradise here. UTOPIAS cannot die.’ Tashka, Chief of the Yawanawa Thomas Mitchell Thomas
48 Critical Costume 2015 49 Zsófia Geresdi Costumes of ‘Midsummer Night’s Doctoral Candidate Dream’ - The Poetry of Nature Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Hungary [email protected] William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most significant nodes of English Renaissance literature. Shakespeare’s dream is built Zsófia Geresdi is a Hungarian stage and costume designer, currently upon the opposition and sameness of two worlds. The studying at the Doctoral School of the Hungarian University of Fine plot of the comedy is built upon a structure dictated Arts. Her BA in Stage Design was received from the Art Department by a rite; this ceremony is the true, generative dream of University of Kaposvár (2011), her MA degree was earned at the of a poet who sets up contrasts, unravels layers, and Hungarian University of Fine Arts (2013). She participated at the in the end, untangles the strands in order to create Hungarian National Conference of Art Students’ Associations, then a new unity. For Ovidius: love is a metamorphosis. she achieved third place at an international set design competition, For Shakespeare: it is mutation. I wanted to examine organized by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milan). She took this mutation with my set and costume design, which part in establishing many performances, mostly youth, child and I created for my BA thesis and now, I re-think it as puppet plays, such as: Carnival of the animals (2014), The Emperor’s my first project studying as a doctoral candidate. My New Clothes by György Ránki (2014), Heart of Mozart (2013), The costumes are softly layered and geometric, made of Pelican (2013), The Town Musicians of Bremen (2012), The lost key by textile and paper, and working as clean slates, being Anna Vécsei (2012), One act plays by Anton Chekhov (2012). She is able to serve as one empty canvas for the two worlds, interested in experimenting with found space, the rites of nowadays; for dual roles, such as Titania and Hippolyta; Oberon characters in the reality of theatre; and intercession of the forms. and Theseus. Zsofia Geresdi
50 Critical Costume 2015 51 Daphne Karstens MA student London College of Fashion, UK [email protected] ‘PING’ (working title)
Daphne Karstens is a Master’s degree student in Costume Design for My work is based on the piece of prose ‘PING’ Performance at London College of Fashion, In 2013 she graduated in (1966) by Samuel Beckett. Near-death experiences Scenography from De Theaterschool, Amsterdam. In 2011 Karstens (NDE) and out-of-body experiences are the main presented her performance ‘RGB, a triadic ballet’ at the DISK theatre inspiration for the performance and the costume. as part of Scenofest 2011. Karstens’ interestsinclude the exploration The performance visualizes the struggle of a person of the sculptural side of costumes and unconventional materials to submerged in an unknown and ephemeral world, create experimental performance pieces. Another interest of hers exploring the relation between the physical body is wearable sculpture. and out-of-body ‘spiritual body’. The spiritual body is ephemeral; it might only exist for the briefest of moments. The costume is both restrictive and suggestive of a second body, the ephemeral body. Through the use of smoke I tried to capture the ephemerality of a NDE within the costume and performance. I have always been very much fascinated by death and the inexplicable element in this subject. Many religions and cultures have tried to explain and understand death, but till today there exists a certain mystery around the subject. With this performance I try to project the feeling of this mythical aspect of (near-) death to the spectators. ????????????? Alex Traylen Alex
52 Critical Costume 2015 53 Rosemarie Allaert _ Transformation 1 and 2 [email protected] It all started with Ophelia and the question of how she could be portrayed without saying Shakespeare’s famous words: How can we capture her vulnerability all in one image transforming over the course of the Rosemarie Allaert, born in 1991 in Antwerp (BE), recently graduated performance? Could she, for example, be dressed from the Amsterdam School of the Arts as a scenographer and in a wax dress, slowly melting and losing its form? costume designer. Her graduation essay and installation explore What can the changing, evolving material that she is the new inventions in materials that can be used for costume and wearing, contribute to her costume, to the performer their effect on the performance. Rosemarie has a lot of experience and the performance as a whole? designing for non-text based theatre like contemporary mime and This question led to visual research on the relation dance. Apart from working for directors and choreographers, she between performer and costume, skin and ethereal also makes visual performances and installations independently or material. It is a dance between the performer and with fellow scenographers and visual artists. She worked with Iris the material around her. She influences the material van Herpen for the Voltage Collection shown at Paris Haute Couture by her movement; at the same time, the material is Week SS2012. Before moving to Amsterdam in 2010, she lived and unpredictable and lives its own life: a dance sometimes worked in Stockholm (SE) where she also studied Theatre Science in harmony, sometimes not. Could this way of using at the University of Stockholm and assisted the scenographers at costume eventually lead to changing the passive the experimental theatre venue Dramalabbet. role of costume and turn it into a role that is not illustrative but an active part of telling the story? A costume that performs, transforms and shows the audience more than a superficial image and tells us, without words or movement, for example what the mental state of a character is. How would it change the way we make performances and change the way performers perform? Robert der Ree van
54 Critical Costume 2015 55 Practices / Materials Artistic Exploration
56 Critical Costume 2015 Simona Rybáková Costume design by Simona Rybáková Costume Designer, Independent Researcher, PhD Czech Republic My contribution to the exhibition is a series of [email protected] photographs from my three last design projects in drama and opera. Each project is represented by a collection of production photographs which Simona Rybáková is a Czech textile and costume designer, and show actual costumes on the actor’s body, the independent researcher. Her PhD dissertation focused on alternative space/scenography, as well as materials used for the and new ways in contemporary costume design. Her work includes costumes. The pictures focus on costumes from these designs for a wide range of performance events in both conventional three performances with strong visual aesthetics. theatres and special events. Rybáková is an active member of The costumes also present the use of non-traditional the OISTAT Performance Design Committee (Costume Design materials and their influence on the final design. Group). From 1997 to 2007 she was the Czech representative in the Why this collection of photos? The common OISTAT Executive Committee, and she is the winner of the PQ 1999 denominator is a special material, which I started Golden Triga. Alongside exhibiting her work in several international using many years ago for creating costumes. It is exhibitions, she was the curator of the Extreme Costume exhibition foam padding material originally used for making at PQ 2011. She was also winner of the Golden Medal for Costume seamless bras. This material has a specific character: Design at World Stage Design 2013. It is light, good for construction, it can stretch, permeable, good for dyeing, easy to cut and sew. All these specific properties offer different ways of modelling the character and shape of the costume, compared to traditional fabrics. In the first show I had used this material only for a few costumes, but after recognizing its virtues, I used it for designing all the costumes for a large-scale opera. The economic advantage of this material is very interesting especially Works presented: for large-scale production. I like to work with this F.F. Šamberg, Eleventh Commandment (2013) material, because cutting and modelling flat pieces to SKUTR, Swan Lake (2013) 3D costumes becomes creative and gives possibilities Leoš Janáček, The Excursion of Mr. Brouček (2014) to build the final character also on the actor’s body. Martin Popelář
58 Critical Costume 2015 59 Ines Alda Second Skin Stage/Costume Designer Germany Layers of fabric being glued together This work is part of my costume design for a ballet production which deals with the ‘Swan Maiden Myth’. In this [email protected] I create a skin with its dermal layers myth the Swan Maiden’s powerful garment was violently taken away from her and in many variants her skin-like skin white fabric garment was destroyed. Thus a part of her identity was also destroyed. My focus was on the second skin aspect of skin red fabric the garment. My intention was to create an organic, biomechanical, fragile but also violent look. Ines Alda, born 1977, is a Stage and Costume designer based in Berlin. I cut the Second Skin She is involved in theatre and ballet productions worldwide, such I create a very exact, minimalistic pattern as New York City Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Ballet Zurich, by twisting and sewing the fabric. Stuttgart Ballet, Deutsches Theater, Staatstheater Stuttgart. She studied Stage and Costume Design at the Staatliche Akademie der It creates an illusion. Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. In 2006 she graduated and received a It looks like skin. This is the imitation. diploma with distinction (Master of Arts). Before and during her study It is really violated. This is the reality. she worked as a Stage and Costume Designer. In 2007 she received Cut the fabric means a scholarship for the International Forum at the Theatertreffen of Cut the skin means the Berliner Festspiele. www.inesalda.com Destruction.
The photos intensify the illusional aspect. They are a lie. They pretend something which is not: by the detail I choose to show, by the camera shake I do, by the final photo-shopping. Ines Alda
60 Critical Costume 2015 61 Giulia Pecorari Independent Professional Italy/UK Ni Una Mas - Exploring Clothing as [email protected] Psychological Armour
Giulia Pecorari holds a Master of Arts and she is a lecturer in Costume With Ni Una Mas I explore mental and physical Construction at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University fragility in relation to violence against women and of London, UK. Giulia’s work is an experiment of unusual materials how to express this through costume, as well as the and techniques that aims to create unique shapes, conceptual ideas, use of new materials and its properties in costume costumes for performance and wearable sculptures. Her research design. Thanks to the dialogue and interaction explores the relationship between the human condition and clothing, between costume and performer, the two become an the relationship between the performer’s movement and the costume, extension of each other, and so the costume becomes and how to express a concept through a costume’s transformation a vehicle that expresses the concept of the piece. The due to the interaction between the two. Performance is where this performer’s costume became her imaginary armour research comes to life. and protection from the external world, prone to break at any moment if something violent hits. The movement and breathing of the performer causes the costume to break apart unconsciously. As the show develops, the costume shatters, highlighting the deterioration of her mental and physical state. Finally, she is left exposed, showing her most fragile, intimate side. Francesco Migliorini Francesco
62 Critical Costume 2015 63 Dawn Summerlin Perceptive Fragility MA student / Lecturer in Costume and Design Edge Hill University, UK Perceptive Fragility is a choreographed dance piece [email protected] investigating the synthesis of abstraction, restriction and fragile figuration, in which the porcelain costume is the ‘text’ to the piece. The choreographed piece is Dawn Summerlin is an artist currently working at Edge Hill University presented as a short film sequence, a prelude to the live as a lecturer in Costume and Design. Her role is multifaceted in also dance performance which will take place on the 18th technically supporting the Performing Arts students with their April 2015 at the Rose Theatre, Edge Hill University, costume and theatre design production work. She has worked England, subsequently informing an installation previously as a TV and Film Artistic Director /Set Designer with over environment. The costumes are designed and created ten years’ experience working for Yorkshire & Granada Television on by Dawn Summerlin as part of her practice-led MA many period & contemporary dramas and freelance short films. She research project, ‘Making Performance’ programmed is currently studying the ‘Making Performance’ MA at Edge Hill; her at Edge Hill University. The objective of this research research examines the restrictive fragility of the porcelain costumes was firstly to develop an unconventional costume for as the text to create new narratives within a choreographed piece the dancers, removing their natural, fluid freedom and of dance. placing them within a cold, restrictive, claustrophobic and intimidating environment, some of the revealed aesthetics experienced whilst wearing the fine porcelain costumes. This approach is placing the costume at the forefront, as the written text which will determine the choreography of the dance piece, rather than being the latter consideration. Secondly, once the audience realizes the material nature of the costumes being worn, this will engage the audience at a level of anxiety, as they anticipate the risk potential to the dancers performing unexpected sequences and range of movement, in such a fragile garment. Dawn Summerlin Dawn
64 Critical Costume 2015 65 Sally E. Dean Something’s in the Living Room Independent Dance/Theatre Artist and MPhil Candidate Royal Holloway University, UK Something’s in the Living Room, a one woman site-specific and [email protected] costume performance piece, was developed and performed in summer 2014 in Theatre Arena (Java, Indonesia), in a site-specific 15th century building (Edinburgh Fringe Sally E. Dean (UK/USA) has been an interdisciplinary performer, Festival), and in a private home (Helsinki, Finland). This performance maker and teacher over fifteen years - in university, installation exhibits the remaining ‘skin’ of the costume professional and community settings across Europe, Asia and the shed from the last performance. During the performance USA. Her teaching and performance work is highly informed by process, the visceral physical interplay between performer somatic-based practices, her cross-cultural projects in Asia and her (body), costume and site, continually re-shaped and background in both dance and theatre - integrating site, costume re-designed both the costume and the movement of the and object. Sally’s work has been supported by the Arts Council performer - operating in a ‘state of flux’. The material of England and the British Council. She is the artistic director of Sally E. the bin bags was fragile and unpredictable enough as to Dean Performing Arts Inc. and the Kolaborasi Project (2006-present). ‘re-design’ itself during each performance. Photography Sally is a certified teacher of Skinner Releasing Technique, an Amerta and film footage reveals excerpts from the performance Movement practitioner (trained with Suprapto Suryodarmo from process. Something’s in the Living Room has been developed Java), and a British ‘Wheel of Yoga’ certified Scaravelli teacher. from Sally’s ‘Somatic Movement & Costume Project’ She has a background in butoh, physical theatre, improvisation in collaboration with ongoing and founding costume and playwriting. Since 2011, Sally leads the ‘Somatic Movement & designers Sandra Arròniz Lacunza and Carolina Rieckhof Costume Project’ - designing multi-sensorial costumes that create (2011-current). This project begins with what often specific body-mind experiences, in collaboration with costume gets overshadowed in the performance and costume designers, that lead to workshops, performances, films and talks. world - the kinaesthetic sensation and experience that Her writings about the project have been published in the Journal the costume generates while wearing it. The aesthetic of Dance and Somatic Practices (forthcoming in 2015), Embodied and movement of the performance work comes from Lives book (2014), and Scene, Vol. 2, 1+2, Special issue on ‘Critical the somatic experiences (kinaesthetic and sensorial) of Costume’ (2014). She is an MPhil candidate at Royal Holloway wearing the costume, rather than the costumes being University (Drama/Theatre department). www.sallyedean.com designed to enhance an aesthetic already established in and www.kolaborasi.org advance. The visually dominated performance approach to costume is re-located as a multi-sensorial experience. Luna Visairas Luna Pérez
66 Critical Costume 2015 67 Karolina Mazur Independent Artist Poland [email protected] C o s t u m e E x p e r i e n c e
Karolina Mazur is a scenographer, costume and fashion designer of I present my individual research work in costume Polish origin. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (MA) design. While working on a production, I always and at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin (Erasmus exchange). examine the role of costume. Costumes for the She worked in numerous theatres in Poland, with various directors. performance Oedipus King (directed by Jan Klata Her most significant productions include: Ubu King, 2014; Oedipus in Stary National Theatre in Cracow, 2013) were the King, 2013, both directed by Jan Klata, Stary National Theatre created with recycled garbage bags. This experience in Cracow. She worked with the director Paweł Świątek (Healter opened my thinking about new materials and textiles Skelter, 2012; Disappearing Schools, 2013; The Black and The Jungle in my costume design practice. The costumes from People, 2014). Karolina Mazur’s body of work reflects her interests Oedipus King, which can explore the idea of friendly and experience in creating the theatre space with different cultural, environment life, were a completely new experience architectural and social observations. with costume materials for me. Magda Hueckel
68 Critical Costume 2015 69 Jörn Fröhlich Steampunk Couture: Steampunk Costume Design Course Coordinator as a Creative Design Tool for a Izmir University of Economics, Turkey [email protected] Crafted Future
Today, people use the term steampunk beyond its hand, the dirt and dust that came along with industrial literary meaning to refer to a style of art and design mass production and waste. This aspect manifests Jörn Fröhlich originally trained as couturier for historical theatre as a creative design solution. There are dozens of itself in the exclusive use of old rags and scraps. As costumes at the State Theatre of Darmstadt, Germany. In 1994, Jörn artists who modify objects to achieve a steampunk a part of the design process I collected garbage bags pursued his career in theatre design at the German Opera on the aesthetic. Steampunk craftsmanship as an increasing full of old textiles in the streets and combined them Rhine, Rheinoper Düsseldorf, Germany, where he staged numerous counter-cultural movement inhabits new ways of on dummies with the aim of mimicking historical operas, plays and ballets as stage and costume designer after design inspired by mankind’s pursuit of scientific female costume silhouette of the 1870`s - 1890´s. graduating from Berlin University of Fine Arts (UdK) with a Master’s knowledge reflected in tools, furniture, architecture, After cleaning, dyeing and processing the fabrics, degree in stage and costume design in 2002. In 2005 he expanded literature, art, design and fashions. Through its curtains became skirts, cushions became sleeves, his artistic skills towards commercial visual communication design, combination of history and speculative fiction, jackets became corsages …etc. No piece had been visual merchandising and window display, when he took over the steampunk is uniquely positioned to explore ideas that looked at for what it was, but what it might become. position of visual merchandising manager at Breuninger Dept. have their roots in the past, and to consider, critique During the pattern research and tailoring process Store in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2007 he established his own design and highlight social and technological solutions of I enjoyed dwelling on choices and made it my goal label JOFRO.COM. In 2010 he joined academic design education at the past, the present and the future alike. Steampunk to use all gathered materials. Instead of defining the Izmir University of Economics where he is currently supervising the aesthetics are here discussed as a new social paradigm number of costumes, I embraced all outcomes along graduation projects in fashion collection and visual merchandising for a new possible utopic world rooted in hands- the way and the twelve costumes are the result of in the Department of Fashion and Textile Design. on, participatory activities by using crafting skills this artistic free-style collage work flow. rejecting the plastic and ephemeral world of today. Steampunk Couture represents steampunk aesthetics as a transformative design method in twelve costumes. Works are inspired by the Victorian era and illustrate the richness of the industrial revolution in dress by means of bustles, headpieces and jewellery from
Ersan Çeliktaş & Jörn Fröhlich Ersan Çeliktaş mechanical gears on the one hand, and on the other
70 Critical Costume 2015 71 Denise Massman Costumes for Characters Yet to Be Head, Department of Creative Arts Written – Mise-en-scène Siena College, USA [email protected] As costume designers we are limited and freed, at the same time, by the constructs of the script and the vision of the director. Although this is the work Denise Massman harkens from Montana. She has been specializing - to create character and to make clear the story, in all aspects of theatre design for over 30 years. She has designed we are also lovers of the principles of design, line, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, shape, colour, texture, etc. When we run our fingers Measure for Measure and The Tempest for Montana Shakespeare over fabric, trims, and feast our eyes on colour and in the Parks; The Marriage of Figaro for The Montana Lyric Opera shape of found items we can imagine a hundred Company; The Miracle Worker and Steel Magnolias for The Montana ways to put these elements together and create our Repertory Theatre; George M! for The Missoula Children’s Theatre; own character and story, free from the constraints My Fair Lady and K2 for the Alpine Theatre Project; dance costumes of the collaboration. These figures are created from for Motrans Dance Company; Onsite tableaus for a multimedia an extreme desire to express ideas about imaginary project called Geyserland; The Secret Garden, the opera Hansel and characters born from the mind of a costumer. They Gretel and First Lady at Lawrence University; Martha Mitchell Calling express the love for the craft as well as the idea or and OR at StageWorks Hudson and a long career at Grandstreet concept. These sculptures/costumes/characters are Theatre in Helena, Montana. She designed costumes for Venus in Fur based on the human form and create stories beyond and Gypsy, a Musical Fable at Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, fashion, beyond history and beyond reality - yet NY. She designs regularly for Siena College where she heads the they evoke all of these things at the same time. The Department of Creative Arts and teaches interdisciplinary and process of creating these characters examines the theatre design courses. methodology of creating costumes. Which comes first – the character, the research, the materials? What begets what? The human form begins the story. Denise Massman
72 Critical Costume 2015 73 Interconnectivity / Encounters
74 Critical Costume 2015 Joost van Wijmen ENCOUNTER#2 Costume design Instructor & Research Centre Performative Processes Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU), The Netherlands ENCOUNTER#2 is part of a practice based research [email protected] project about making physical contact. We use physical contact in many ways: to comfort, to love, to hurt. Making contact by using our body is an essential Joost van Wijmen (b.1975) studied Theatre Design at the way to relate to another human being. But these Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU) in the Netherlands and at the contacts are framed within strict social rules and Kunsthochschule Weissensee (KH) in Berlin, Germany. He started as norms about physical behaviour. What happens an assistant costume designer at the Dutch National Opera, Dutch when we fit a costume, take measurements, dress National Ballet, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and The Barbican the other, make physical contact and enter each Theatre London with Robert Wilson. His costume designs cover other’s personal space? During a costume fitting, a range of opera, dance and youth theatre productions. He has both costume designer and performer experience designed for Het Filiaal, Joop van den Ende Theatre Productions, moments of ‘intervention’, without knowing the Music Theatre Transparant, Dutch Opera Studio, de Stilte, Holland other intimately. ENCOUNTER#2 stages these Symfonia, M-Lab, Opera2day, Utrecht String Quartet, the Helsinki moments of intervention in a more abstract context. Philharmonic and many Dutch theatre festivals. He has worked with The purpose of this project is to share the experience directors and choreographers including Monique Corvers, Nanine of two bodies intervening and interacting as a result Linning, Jack Timmermans, Paul Eenens, Bruun Kuijt and Monique of direct physical contact. What happens when we Wagemakers. Joost van Wijmen teaches costume design since 2002 hack into each other’s bodies? at the Utrecht University of the Arts. Since 2009 he is also part of the Research Centre Performative Processes at the Utrecht University of the Arts. For further information: www.joostvanwijmen.nl Robin van de Ploeg Robin van
76 Critical Costume 2015 77 Kegham Djeghalian Image Designer Institut Français de la Mode (IFM), France [email protected] INTI-MATE
Kegham Djeghalian is a Paris based multidisciplinary visual artist, INTI-MATE is a performative installation that fashion stylist and art director. He was born in Cairo to Armenian- addresses the garment-costume as an embodied Palestinian parents and carries a Dutch nationality. He is currently shelter second-skin, a mobile imaginary microcosmic an image designer at the Institut Français de la Mode. He studied habitation of two individuals in an alter-community. Visual Arts and Costume Design at the American University in Cairo, Alter-communities are negotiated through the subject- Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College and fashion studies at Central to-subject (body-to-body) relations. This intimate St Martins and London College of Fashion. His current visual art and alter-community of challenged communal bonds fashion work revolves around the problematics of representation in addressed a rupture or a change in the agency of fashion, embodiment, inhabitance and identity politics. Djeghalian’s the body within the liminal and co-relational mode work has been internationally exhibited in group and solo shows, of inhabiting. and his shoots and articles were published in diverse online and print The intricate physical impossibilities of co-habitation magazines. His first fashion video work was showcased in 2014 at and pairing are set forward through the construction the Centre Pompidou during the festival A Shaded View on Fashion of the garment-shelter-costume. The body-to-body Film ASVOFF7. He lectures and leads workshops on fashion styling affinity and movement of the co-inhabitant performers is practices and art direction. examined through the confinement of the construction of the costume. INTI-MATE is part of a series of documented performative experiments that first started in the context of my artist research residency ‘Future Archeology’ at Impus/Tanz festival in Vienna in 2013. Kegham Djeghalian
78 Critical Costume 2015 79 Sue Prescott Lecturer, Major Coordinator, Fashion Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand [email protected] Seeing Sound, Hearing Light 2
Fashion, costume and performance connect Sue Prescott’s Seeing Sound, Hearing Light 2 is a costume examining interdisciplinary creative work, teaching and research. She has been a how clothing as an expressive language has the innate fashion design lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand since 2000. capacity to engage with sensorial response in exploring Research into synaesthesia often informs Sue’s creative design practice how the everyday of a location is a place and a space and teaching. Her work occupies a position between the cultural, for revitalisation of the senses, rituals, connection historical and social latitudes of fashion and costume, exploring and and performance. Digitally printed fabrics depicting discussing the relationship of the body with environment, with an imagery from selected urban and coastal environments interest in recycling materials, mending and sustainable practice. Sue in Wellington, New Zealand, were used to create this gained her Honours Degree in Fashion/Textile Design in the UK and costume, linking people with environments, whilst her Master of Design qualification in New Zealand. She has practiced exploring the impact of Fiske’s idea that clothing as a fashion and costume designer and exhibited in the UK, India, functions as a means of communication.(1) Creating a Pakistan, Australia, New York and New Zealand. Sue has actively soundtrack from audio recordings in both environments practiced design in conjunction with her roles in education in New was translated into a visual context, through audio- Zealand and has designed six opera productions in New Zealand in responsive lighting embedded within the costume, that time. She has judged the World of Wearable Art Awards as well triggering light responses relative to the sounds within as winning several awards as an entrant. specific areas of the costume. The proposed exhibit uses sound, lighting, film and the visual to explore connections between costume and environment enabling materiality and place to be mutually connective,(2) as suggested by Umberto Eco. (1) Fiske, J. (1989). Understanding Popular Culture. London, UK: The costumes explore a connection between the wearer Routledge. M.Barnard. (2002). (2) Fashion as Communication. entering the environments as an unheard performance London, England: Routledge. (3) A. Hollander. (1978) Seeing following Hollander’s idea that the clothes speak loudly Through Clothes. New York: Viking. for those characters who utter no sound(3). Vanessa Simons Vanessa
80 Critical Costume 2015 81 Susan T. Avila* & Rui Xu** Connected by a Thread * Professor and Chair of Design / ** PEP Student (RCA) and Associate Professor (CAFA) * University of California, Davis, USA / ** Royal College of Art (RCA) and Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), China This project is a collaboration between Susan T. [email protected] / [email protected] Avila, a textile artist living in California, USA, and Rui Xu, a fashion designer living in Beijing, China. Faced with shockingly different climates, landscapes, Susan T. Avila is an artist, Professor and Chair of Design at the and cultures, the idea was to bring together these University of California, Davis, and a Chutian Scholar at Wuhan Textile differences as a point of departure. The results are University in Wuhan, China. Her textile artwork is included in several textiles transformed into performative costumes books and periodicals and she has exhibited work in numerous animated by the physical and/or invisible body. international and national exhibitions. Avila’s unique textile constructions begin with waste discarded from the garment industry. New textile Rui Xu, Professor at China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Her structures are created from leftover thread or fabric monograph, Xiang Wang Yi, received many awards including Red- that is joined through an embroidery process; small dot Design Award, Germany, and Gold Award of Design of Asia. Her fabric pieces are reassembled into larger ones and experience includes: the Miss World Competition 2010; Shanghai printed. Silk fabrics allude to Chinese history as does Expo China Pavilion; and consultant for Chu Costume Show during the auspicious colour red. Xu’s garment designs derive the Beijing Olympics (2008). from Ancient Chinese costume, where nobility could display their conspicuous leisure through layers of fine cloth, carefully yet impractically draped over the body, impeding movement. In Xu’s interpretation, however, the absurdity of the garments is reflected through movement, both when worn on the body as a moving armature or alluding to the vacant body through ironically placed (and distinctly western style) collars and cuffs. Chong Zhang
82 Critical Costume 2015 83 Exhibition LUME Media Centre team
Exhibition Curator Event coordinator Broadcast engineer, TV studio Sofia Pantouvaki Birgitta Rosti-Pylkkänen Max Mäkinen
Exhibition Coordinator Production Manager Studio master Jorge Sandoval Samppa Murtomäki Ville Wikström
Exhibition Design Studio manager, Sampo auditorium Studio manager, TV studio Sofia Pantouvaki and Jorge Sandoval Mika Hyttinen Toni Tolin
Lighting Design AV technician, Sampo auditorium Eero Erkamo, VÄS, University of the Arts Helsinki, Theatre Academy “Ville” Jari Manninen With many thanks to Tomi Humalisto, Professor in Lighting Design, VÄS, University of the Arts Helsinki, Mannequins and costume maintenance Studio manager, Studio theatre Theatre Academy; Tarja Peltoniemi, Producer, Johanna Ilmarinen Ilkka Riihikallio Communications Services, Aalto University; Fashion Special constructions and props Stage assistant, Studio theatre Design Major at the Department of Design, Aalto Jyri Lahelma Tero Vesterinen University.
Video materials tech support Stage assistant, Studio theatre Jussi Lohijoki Mirva Jantunen
Audiovisual equipment Stage manager, Film studio & props/constructions Esa Mattila Pasi Pakula
Exhibition design assistant Riccardo Mainetti, exchange student in Scenography & Costume Design, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera
84 Critical Costume 2015 85 Exhibition setup assistants Exhibition catalogue
Ina Dolk Editor Tiina Hauta-aho Sofia Pantouvaki Aura Kajaniemi Amita Kilumanga Production coordination Siru Kosonen Jorge Sandoval and Liisa Pesonen Roosa Marttiini Language editing & proofreading Liisa Niskanen Costume in Focus friends Mimosa Ruut Heli Salomaa Graphic design Lauren Sever Liisa Pesonen Susanna Suurla
Exchange students: Samantha Airey, Riccardo Mainetti, Melissa Svensson
The event is assisted by all current BA and MA students of The presentation of the artists’ works is based costume design. on abstracts and statements provided by the exhibitors. Due to the high level of non-English- speaking-background (NESB) participants, careful Special thanks to all the students from the Department of editing has taken place in order to ensure English Film, TV and Scenography who worked as volunteers and/ consistency. or in the frame of their studies for the setup and run of the Critical Costume 2015 exhibition! With thanks to Professor Peter McNeil.
86 Critical Costume 2015 87 Aalto University publications series ART + DESIGN + ARCHITECTURE 4 /2015 ISBN 978-952-60-6131-3 (printed) ISSN 1799-4853 (printed)
Printed in Unigrafia Helsinki 2015 www.aalto.fi